


Paper Spiders

by Nelja-in-English (Nelja)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, High School, Mind Control, Origami, Spiders, Statement, The Web (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, piles of nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-07 13:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16409567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/pseuds/Nelja-in-English
Summary: Statement of Flora Hodges, regarding a Halloween prank war at her high school and the consequences.





	Paper Spiders

I have always loved spiders. For different reasons. It started when I was a little girl and my mother explained to me that they were not pests, as they were eating mosquitoes and flies. I hated mosquito bites, so of course they became my friends, or at least my allies. Then I was a teen, and I loved them as a part of the goth aesthetic. Then I became a pretentious young adult, and I was explaining, when asked: spiders are important, conceptually. There are a lot of animals we could imagine if they didn't exist. most of them actually, though not the octopus or the giraffe or a few others. But who would have thought about the concept of the spider web? They go farther than human imagination. And I must have given a lot of other explanations through the years, including: I will love them since no one else will. The reasons changed, the fact didn't.

Maybe I was wrong after all, and I should have feared them. Or maybe that's the reason I got away.

I'm a high school teacher. We have too few janitors to wash too many rooms, and sometimes, well, we have spiders in class. There is often one kid who is phobic, almost two or three of them who will pretend the are to mock them or to interrupt the course; so I send then into the corridor, I take the spider in my hand, blow on it through the window, and call them back. Often after, the whole class looks at my hands like they are disgusting. It's probably not very hygienic, but they will leave chewing-gum under their desks, so let them talk.

Sorry, I'm getting off topic. So it started as Halloween was getting close, a week before Autumn half term, on Monday. I was opening my locker and a huge spider picture fell out.

It was printer paper, so larger than nature, a skeleton tarantula. Of course my first reaction was to wonder at how cute it was and put it in my bag. As a gift. But here I saw two of my colleagues - Harvey Perez, in geography, and another I don't know well. They seemed disappointed and told me to look at the other side. It was white, with only these words "to be passed on". then I understood it was not a gift but a prank, and we were waiting to see people scream, or at least be uneasy.

I kept the spider pic anyway. To be honest, I didn't find the joke very funny. The day after, I noticed a few spider pics in the waste-paper basket, so I guess it didn't stop them. I'm almost sure one of my colleagues actually went into the toilet to cry. And I was growing more and more annoyed at the instigators. Assholes. I'm not phobic of anything, my fears are abstract fears that can't be triggered with pictures, but I'm still sympathetic, you know?

Next day, I found three different pics on my locker of three different spiders, and even a plastic one. Someone really wanted to use their money and the school printer for evil. The atmosphere was morose, which is weird, three days before the holidays. People seemed nervous. Even the ones who did play the game and put the pictures in other lockers didn't seem to have fun, you know? More like wronged people who were taking revenge. I don't know on whom, since I don't know who started it. Could have been Harvey Perez, he loves jokes, but he's not the only one and I had no proof anyway.

The next day - it was Thursday - the students were depressed. They were behaving, you know, and it was surprising, when there was only a day and a half before the holidays. And they didn't seem happy, which was weird, for the same reason. I asked them what was the problem and one of them showed me one of the spider photographs, folded in an origami spider.

I did a bit of origami, but only the basics. Spiders are hard. Especially this one, that had all the legs, and even the pedipalps. I laughed and said it surely was a good idea to use these photos. Did they find them in a waste-paper basket? It sure was going out of hand.

But he looked at me miserably and said that he found it in his locker. It came by itself. And it tried to jump at him while he was taking his stuff. And then it became paper.

Yes, they all confirmed, it happened! “That's why I couldn't take my things in my locker, I saw them move!” To be honest, I was still not sure if my colleagues where very determined to prank everyone in the school - and very motivated to do origami, it takes time - or of they were joking to explain why they hadn't done their homework, which seemed more in character at the time.

I had to take out three spiders in only one day. They don't show up that often usually. I thought: maybe we don't notice them, except in the origami spider days. But it was a distant worry for me, I was thinking about the holidays more. It's one thing we have in common with the students. Some teachers will say they don't, but they're liars.

After school, the headmaster came into the teacher's room - he never does this. And he started to complain. These spider pranks had to stop, he said. It was very stupid. His office was full of spider webs. I was surprised, I didn't know they had brought actual spiders. Poor things. It sure explained all the ones I had to put out. 

The headmaster insisted, no spiders on the t day. I was hoping they would be afraid and listen. I did not really believe it. This kind of people take it like a challenge. If some woman crying encourages them, the headmaster screaming is surely even more motivating. So I went in for my last work day expecting spider day. In some way, I was right.

Nothing happened in the morning courses, except we still had more normal spiders than usual, but I think the headmaster has asked the cleaning personnel to be extra cautious with them. My students were working on a test - it feels awful, the last day, but at least they would have the holidays free - and I was vacantly looking at the test, trying to imagine how I would grade it. And then the paper began to move into my hands.

I guess it folded itself into a spider, but I wasn't able to see the details, as the students started screaming. All the papers had folded into paper spiders that were crawling everywhere. And from the other rooms, everyone was wailing.

Do you know how much paper there is in a high school? The good answer is not “less since the computers”, since there's always endless printing. So yeah I could feel the collective panic going. I don't even fear spiders and I was almost panicking myself. Everyone out, I ordered, by the fire escape ways! The spiders jumped in my face. They were everywhere. We ran. Some students ran into each other, fought to get out first.

It was all useless, because in the courtyard, waited for us a huge paper spider.

It was getting taller than first floor, and though I could recognize that parts of its legs, its abdomen, it's mandibles were books I know, it was a spider. I can swear to you it was a real spider. Not a prank, not an elaborate prop. It was closest to the idea of a spider than any actual one I had ever seen.

And all the kids who had been running started to line up in front of it. The also became deadly silent. Like they were waiting for a class to open, for a course to start. The entered the spider's mouth, and it ate them. there was no blood; actually, it looked like all the students who entered were changed into paper themselves. The crunching noises sounded like paper. They entered this huge abdomen of course books and essays and administrative works, and were eaten, making the spider bigger and bigger, like a a two story building, then three.

I hadn't even realized I was lining up myself, and soon I was the next one. I was terribly afraid, not because I had an idea of what would happen to me, but because it made no sense. These things don’t happen! But I couldn't run, I couldn't move, I could only walk with even steps, towards the spider.

It took me into two of its paper legs, it got me close to its mouth, so close...

And then it blew on me.

I went above the metal railings around the high school and fell on the street, and I passed out from pain. Some neighbour called an ambulance, and at the hospital, they told me that I had broken an arm and three ribs. They asked me how it happened, and I said that I had a normal work day and then I passed out and I had no idea. I didn't want them to think me mad, you know.

Wen I got a new phone - the old one has broken too - I started to check, to see how the journals and the Police explained everyone disappearing. I was fearing all the worst things about drugs or gang wars - we're not the most peaceful neighbourhood, and even if things very rarely happen, well, they do.

There was nothing. I was both relieved and very afraid by the idea it was all a nightmare, since I could have swore it had happened - but I still have all these broken bones, and no explanation other than a giant paper spider! 

I texted all my colleagues, asking them what happened. Nothing special. They didn't understand. They didn't seem eager to talk to me, even the ones I consider as friends. They didn't understand when I mentioned the last day, or even the last week, or when I talked about spiders. 

When the school started back, i still had some sickness leave, of course, but I looked at the kids' Instagram - they have one for school - to at least have some photographs, to see if the high school was still the same. There was nothing. Either no one had came back to school, either they had collectively stopped taking photographs.

At the end of my sick leave, of course, I thought about coming back. The day before, I passed by the school, to see if I could ask someone who worked her. I was hurt when my colleagues ignored me. The students didn't, but they looked so... serious, and scared. They weren't the ones I had known. They didn't ask about my broken arm. I had the feeling they knew, and I even felt they were looking at me with... hatred, and, even more stupid, jealousy. And even if my students were almost all here, I couldn't find the kids who had been phobic of spiders.

The next day, I told the doctor I had a panic attack and couldn't go back to school. She was nice and extended the leave immediately. I did all the paperwork to change high school by Internet and telephone, even sending back my library books by mail, with my broken arm as an excuse, and I went to work elsewhere.

I keep checking the Internet for news about the high school, regularly, almost compulsively you'd say. And I haven't found anything, except one photograph. It's the high school as I knew it, except a lot cleaner, no rubbish on the floor, but if you look, you can see that the ceiling is covered in spider webs.

And nothing else, except the official rankings. They were always quite bad. They're very good now. Everyone agrees the school knows really well how to keep the kids in line.


End file.
